1. Field of the Invention
The disclosures discussed herein generally relate to a printing management device, a printing management method, a printing system and a computer-readable recording medium storing a printing management program.
2. Description of the Related Art
The commercial printing business refers to a particular area of work that makes a profit by generating a printout product requested from a customer based on printed matter (e.g., a catalog, and advertisement) received from the customer, and delivering the generated printout product to the customer. Such a commercial printing business involves plural processes from receiving printed matter from the customer to delivering the printout product to the customer. More specifically, the plural processes from receiving printed matter to delivering the printout product includes prepress tasks including receiving printed matter of a manuscript from the customer, receiving a printing requirement for the printout product, correcting colors, correcting a layout, correcting a binding position and the like, and postpress tasks including printing a proofreading printout for the customer to proofread a result of the prepress task, printing and subsequently binding to prepare the printout product, delivering the printout product to the customer and the like. Note that the number of processes from receiving printed matter to delivering the printout product may vary with the printing requirement for the printout product requested by the customer.
In the typical commercial printing business, a large number of orders are associated with mass-production of printout products, and hence, such printout products are mass-produced in the aforementioned processes. Further, the printing requirement for the mass-production of the printout products requested by the customer is generally inflexible in most cases. Thus, the printout products desired by the customer are generated in a printing cycle of mass-producing the printout products based on a printing requirement, changing the printing requirement into another after having printed one lot of the printout products, and mass-producing printout products based on the changed printing requirement.
In this printing cycle, the aforementioned plural processes may need to be carried out frequently when the printing requirement is changed. However, when there is no change in the printing requirement, printing may be continued in one process, thereby effectively performing mass-producing task.
A so-called “print on demand (POD) market has recently emerged in the commercial printing business. In the POD business, a relatively small lot of printing products is delivered to the customer in a short period. In the POD market, orders are placed from numerous different customers. As a result, printed matter received by the commercial printing company or printing products may have a wide variety of printing requirements in the POD market.
Further, along with a recent increase in digitization of printed matter, computers are utilized for controlling the generation of the printed matter or printout products. For example, there are proposed a technology of receiving the printed matter as electric data via a network, and a technology of controlling a workflow of the aforementioned plural processes. For example, a printing operation in the aforementioned plural processes of the workflow is defined by a job ticket called a job definition format (JDF), and the printing operation is controlled based on the JDF in the printing system.
With a change in the above-described printing environment, the commercial printing companies have promoted the computerization of the printing system in order to generate the received orders of the printed matter. In addition, the commercial printing companies have been required to construct the printing system capable of satisfying a wide variety of the printing requirements for the printout products desired by the customers. Moreover, system management, such as introducing plural printer devices and/or peripheral devices, or operational process management, such as changing the aforementioned plural processes in the relatively short cycle, may also be required in order to generate the printout products that satisfy the wide variety of the printing requirements desired by the customers.
For the commercial printing companies, however, it may be necessary to increase job efficiency further in order to make a profit despite the fact that the above management efforts are required. A technique for improving the job efficiency includes reducing a printing operation interrupting time.
The printing systems of the commercial printing companies are formed in a network environment. In the printing system of the commercial printing company (i.e., the commercial printing system), printer devices are arranged separately from a terminal that performs printing settings of the printer devices. Further, in the commercial printing system, the printer devices and the terminal may be operated by one operator.
Moreover, the commercial printing system generally employs application software for generating printout products. In the commercial printing system, a print job for each of the printout products is generally generated and managed by the application software.
The print jobs are generally generated per customer in the commercial printing system. Since the printing requirements for the printout products widely vary, the operator may need to change settings of the application software and settings of the printers for each of the print jobs in order to satisfy corresponding printing requirements.
For example, when plural customers request printout products having different sizes of sheets, the operator needs to replace the sheets with those having the desired size every time the operator receives a printing request requiring the different sized sheets from the customer.
The printer device generally includes plural paper feed parts. Accordingly, if the printers have the plural paper feed parts capable of accommodating different sized sheets, the operator does not have to replace the sheets with those having the desired size every time the operator receives a printing request requiring the different sized sheets from the customer. However, the number of paper feed parts is limited. Thus, if the number of different sheet sizes requested by the customer's printing request exceeds the number of paper feed parts of the printer device, the operator needs to replace the current sheets with those having a desired size. In this case, the printing operation needs to be interrupted while the sheets are replaced with the desired sheets.
Further, the operator does not have to replace the sheets with those having the desired size every time the operator receives a printing request requiring the different sized sheets if the printing jobs utilizing the sheets having the same size are continuously generated simultaneously in the order of sheet size. However, the operator needs to manage the print job generating order by himself or herself. In this case, the operator's workload increases as the number of printing requests increases or the number of sheet sizes increases. Note that the technique to change the job executing order is known in the art, which is disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 9-185473 (hereinafter referred to as “Patent Document 1”).    Patent Document 1: Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 9-185473
In order to avoid managing the print job generating order, the processing order of the print jobs may be changed such that the print jobs utilizing the same size sheets are simultaneously processed. This may greatly reduce the printing operation interrupting time consumed for the sheet replacing task to a large extent. However, in the commercial printing system, the queuing operation may be controlled such that the queuing operation for aligning a print job in the job queue will not be performed unless the sheet sized sheets actually set in the paper feed part of the printer device matches the sheet size specified in the print job.
Thus, in the above commercial printing system, the queuing operation for aligning a print job in the job queue will not be performed unless the sheet sized sheets actually set in the paper feed part of the printer device matches the sheet size specified in the print job, and hence, a printing operation interrupting time may be required for a sheet replacement task.